Patriots take chance on veteran misfits

Bill shakes up league

By Ian R. Rapoport  |   

Photo by Ted Fitzgerald

 

FOXBORO — The Patriots [team stats] spent the first two days of free agency in near silence, watching and waiting as opponents threw fistfuls of dollars at countless players. Fans no doubt clamored for signs of life underneath Bill Belichick’s hoodie.

He came alive yesterday.

In a training camp opening day no one will forget, the Patriots coach once again turned all eyes on his team by trading for former Pro Bowl players Albert Haynesworth and Chad Ochocinco.

Suddenly, thanks to the addition of the former Redskins defensive tackle and the ex-Bengals wide receiver, the Patriots received a jolt of energy and expertise deemed necessary by Belichick even after a 14-2 season. And the world noticed, with the Pats dominating the headlines, beginning when the Haynesworth deal broke before 6:20 a.m. By 7 p.m., Ochocinco was trending worldwide on Twitter.

While neither trade has been made official, Ochocinco said in a tweet, “God is so Good” after the news broke. Both players headed to the facility last night to meet with Belichick, a coach Ochocinco called “a friend” in 2010.

Suddenly, Trader Bill was back. Belichick left players shaking their heads in awe, aware that their world was quickly changing.

“It’s huge,” defensive end Ty Warren [stats] said of Haynesworth’s trade. “I mean, he’s got some freakish ability.”

When Belichick addressed the media, he acknowledged a deal for Haynesworth was in the works but cautioned it wasn’t done yet. By late last night, it was.

Ochocinco has been a character off the field, whether starring in a television show, emerging as a national brand on Twitter or trying his hand at riding a bull. And he’s no longer young at age 33.

Haynesworth, 30, has battled character concerns for years, from stomping on an opponent to several arrests to refusing to play in the Redskins’ base defense.

Both are talented. Both have question marks. For any trade, Belichick does the research.

“Anytime you acquire a player, however you do it, you want to be comfortable putting that player into your team,” Belichick said. “So whether you draft them, sign them, trade for them, however you do it, that’s what you want to try to do.”

The Ochocinco deal was in the works for days, with the 49ers, Raiders and Patriots having permission to trade for him. The Patriots won out, and Ochocinco had final say.

Of course, this is not unprecedented. The Patriots have taken on erstwhile reclamation projects, disgruntled talents and players with poor reputations before. The success stories of Randy Moss and Corey Dillon [stats] stand out.

Perhaps adding two low-risk high-reward question marks is a sign that Belichick is comfortable with his locker room, even though he said when asked, “I have no idea. This team is a new team.”

“If you’re here, we’ll welcome you with open arms,” nose tackle Vince Wilfork [stats] said. “We always want to be on the same page no matter how you slice it. When you step on the field you have to be on the same page or that’s where mistakes happen.”

To make the deals happen, it doesn’t look like Belichick mortgaged the future. Haynesworth, who will earn a non-guaranteed salary of $5.4 million this season, came over for a fifth-round pick in 2013. The team will try to motivate him.

Ochocinco was reportedly traded for two future late-round picks and restructured his contract into a three-year deal. He will still earn $6 million in 2011, ProFootballTalk.com reported, after just 67 catches for 831 yards last year.

What the Patriots will get remains to be seen. But both Ochocinco and Haynesworth figure to be ecstatic, and a good fit, on their new homes.

The Patriots need pass-rush help, and Haynesworth (51 tackles, 81⁄2 sacks in 2008) providing a push up the middle should assist everyone. Still, one veteran executive familiar with Haynesworth described him as a player “who can dominate when motivated but can quit instantly.”

As was clear in the playoff loss to the Jets, the Patriots need help from an outside receiver. That’s what Ochocinco brings, averaging more than 10 yards per catch each year of his career. He’s just, well, different.

“I think he’d be fine,” receiver Wes Welker said this summer. “I think he’s pretty harmless. He does all the extra stuff that Bill is not too fond of. It’s never anything too bad.”

Article URL: http://bostonherald.com/sports/football/patriots/view.bg?articleid=1354863

18th anniversary of Reggie Lewis’ death

Reggie Lewis, 1965-1993

Muggsy Bogues reflects on his friend’s tragic death.

 

by Tzvi Twersky | @ttwersky

Eighteen years ago today, Reggie Lewis’ heart gave out on him at the all-too-young age of 27.
An NBA veteran of six seasons and one All-Star game at the time of his death, Lewis, a former No. 22 overall pick by the Boston Celtics, was on the cusp of entering the best years of his career—and life. Sadly, it wasn’t meant to be.

Lewis, who first collapsed during his final NBA game—a first round Playoff game against the Charlotte Hornets—fell to the floor while playing offseason basketball at Brandeis University and never recovered. His passing was later attributed to hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, one of the leading causes of sudden deaths among young athletes.

A star who was just beginning to fully shine, Lewis’ career numbers are locked at 17.6 ppg, 4.3 rpg and 1.3 spg for all of eternity, never to be bloated by a peak season, nor shrunk by a twilight one.

Life overlooked, death oversimplified, we could write thousands of more words on Lewis. Instead, we’ll let Muggsy Bogues, a lifelong friend, high school teammate (Dunbar High) and eye witness to Lewis’ first collapse, tell you.

We spoke with Bogues—an always congenial man who nearly broke down when discussing his friend—late last year for a different purpose and have yet to publish his words about Reggie Lewis. Now is the perfect time to do so.

Reggie may be gone, but 18 years later, his memory lives on.

SLAM: Three guys from your high school team at Dunbar were all taken in the same Draft (Bogues, Lewis and Reggie Williams). That’s pretty special.

Muggsy Bogues: Yeah, from the same high school in ’87. David [Wingate] was a year ahead of us. But those are the things that kind of stand out. It was sad, when we played in the ’93 Playoffs and I had to see one of my good friends [Reggie Lewis] fall and collapse out while we were playing. And me and David [Wingate] just happened to be on the court that same time.

SLAM: Man, his passing was so hard on everybody. I can only imagine how difficult it must’ve been for you.

MB: Words can’t describe the pain. Reg was such a great friend of ours, such a great person, so humble, and he was just starting to reach his stardom. That was his team, the Boston Celtics. The Big Three (Larry Bird, Kevin McHale and Robert Parish), had passed the torch down to him and that was something that he felt so grateful for, so respected, because he respected those guys and he earned their respect—it wasn’t something that they just gave him, he earned it. He’s always been that type of humble guy. Even though he was the sixth man on a high school team, you know Reg could start on anybody’s team, but he was able to accept that role to allow us to do what we was able to do—to win the national championship two years in a row. And he always had been that way, and that’s one of the reasons why he was able to put Boston on his shoulders and able to do the things he was able to do and get the respect from the Big Three, as he called it. So now I know he’s smiling up there, watching over his kids, just wishing everybody can continue to keep doing what their supposed to do, because that’s what he would want us to do.

SLAM: It must’ve been so hard for you to get beyond his passing on a certain level.

MB: Yeah, you never get over it. What I do—I celebrate their lives. Because he’s in a much better place right now, and I know if he could he would  say to me, ‘Muggs, I don’t wanna come back. I’m happy where I’m at, but I’m waiting on you! We got the door open, and we’re waiting on you. When it’s your time, we’ll be right here with open arms.’ And those are the things that you go through. You see life; you see death. That’s just what it is. You just gotta appreciate the time that you’re here.

LINK TO ARTICLE: http://www.slamonline.com/online/nba/2011/07/reggie-lewis-1965-1993/

The Perkins trade saga continues …

By: cnnsi.com

 

Former Celtic Kendrick Perkins swapped teams with Jeff Green in a midseason trade. (Elsa/Getty Images)

Boston fans adore Kendrick Perkins, which is why so much of the discussion over a trade involving a marginal NBA starter has been heated and sometimes irrational. Few trades centered around a guy who will almost certainly never reach All-Star status have created such controversy or been deemed so central to the fate of a team. It is not a stretch to say some blame the Perkins/Jeff Green swap for the Celtics’ postseason failure.

The debate reaches such extremes in part because the Perkins deal represents a clash between numbers and the ephemeral notion of “chemistry.” It is very difficult — and perhaps impossible — to find a shred of statistical evidence that the Celtics suffered a drop-off in play because they lost Perkins. (Remember: Correlation does not equal causation. The Celtics’ performed slightly worse after January, but they have mastered the late-season fade over the last few years. Pinning a late-season scoring decline over a small sample size on Perkins seems like a stretch.) But those who believe in the power of a positive, united locker room hold strong to the notion that the loss of a long-term centerpiece deflated the team in ways stats could never measure. It is an appealing argument, in part because it is impossible to disprove.

Rajon Rondo gives voice to that idea in this interview with Yahoo! Sports:

[Rondo] also believes the trade of Perkins, his closest friend on the team, affected the Celtics “more than it should have.”
“It wasn’t like the man passed away or something,” Rondo said. “I think we put too much emphasis on it. It’s a business. He got traded. He’s very happy where he’s at. We still talk and I’m always going to have his back. It shouldn’t have affected us the way it affected us.”

The Perkins trade has always struck me as something of a red herring for Boston fans trying to explain why their team flamed out against Miami. It’s a convenient excuse, and easy “what if?” scapegoat that ignores the context of the 2010-11 season and the Celtics.


Boston’s problem for two years running has been a below-average offense prone to team-killing dry spells. At best, Perkins was not someone who was going to help solve that problem; at worst, he was part of it. Toss in the fact that Boston was going to have trouble re-signing Perkins, and you get what the C’s were going for, especially considering the injury to Marquis Daniels left the team bereft of legit wing backups.

The issue with the deal has always been Green, on both sides. He was a consistent anchor in Oklahoma City; lineups featuring Green almost always performed worse than those that did not include him. The addition of Perkins brought the Thunder a beefy, defensive-oriented center and cleared the power forward spot for Serge Ibaka. It was a double win.

The following things are also true:

• Perkins played just 313 minutes for Boston over 12 games last season. Far too many critics of the trade used the Celtics’ outstanding pre-trade record as evidence the deal was a mistake without acknowledging that Perkins had essentially nothing to do with that record.

• The Celtics’ defense was outstanding all season and remained so in the playoffs. Defense is Perkins’ strength, obviously. If you’re looking for evidence that the team suffered in his absence, you have to find it here. And you can’t. The team’s defense put up stingy numbers when any of the core units were on the floor, save for those involving — you guessed it! – Green. (To be clear, Green didn’t play enough minutes to have a notable impact on the team’s overall defensive performance.) This is true for both Glen Davis, Boston’s crunch-time choice at “center” all season, and Jermaine O’Neal, who put up some of the best individual defensive numbers in the league this season.

• Perkins’ knee was not close to 100 percent, and he flailed badly in the postseason, particularly against Memphis. He gave Nene fits in the first round, but he could not duplicate that against the Grizzlies, who happily ignored him when Oklahoma City had the ball. The Thunder scored 11 fewer points per 100 possessions during the playoffs with Perkins on the floor, and John Hollinger of ESPN.com detailed these problems at length during the series.

• Was a hobbled Perkins equipped to play effectively against the Heat, a team that was (at least at that point in the playoffs) comfortable using small lineups? It’s a counter-factual thing, but it’s not obvious Perkins would have been a huge help against that particular Heat team — especially given his health issues. It’s easy to say the C’s needed someone to knock LeBron James and Dwyane Wade on their rear ends, but that alone wouldn’t have tipped the series Boston’s way.

Perkins has never been a plus offensive player, but in the past he could help by setting vicious screens, finishing the open looks he did get and making an acceptable percentage of his foul shots. In 2010-11 — and in that season alone — the negatives outweighed the positives, and it wasn’t close.

This is not an endorsement of the Perkins/Green trade. The stance here from the moment the deal happened was a mixture of understanding what Boston was going for and nervousness that they had targeted the wrong player (Green) to execute that plan. The Thunder will probably “win” the deal in the long haul, and Boston could get themselves in trouble by over-paying Green. But it has long been time to move away from the idea that the Perkins swap was the single most important factor in Boston’s failure to win the 2010-11 title. The deal may well have affected team chemistry, as Rondo seems to indicate, but the ability to magically heal Rondo’s dislocated left elbow (or perhaps Davis’ psyche) would have helped Boston’s chances in that particular series more than Perkins.

BABC Freshman rise to the challenge

Posted by Danny Ventura (Boston Herald - High School Insider)

The BABC Freshmen added to the program’s illustrious history by knocking off the Louisiana Jaguars, 78-66, to bring home the program’s 14th national championship.

Former Brookline star Jeff Adrien attends a pre-ESPY event

Posted by Danny Ventura (Boston Herald - High School Insider)

Former Herald Dream Teamer Jeff Adrien of Brookline was among those at the iRenew Pre-ESPY dinner for nominee Kemba Walker, the standout guard, who led UConn to the National Basketball title. Like Walker, Adrien attended UConn, playing there from 2006-2009. The 6-foot-7, 245-pounder played all four years for the Huskies, finishing with 1,600 points and 1,100 rebounds (only the second player to reach those stats under coach Jim Calhoun.

Madison Park football coach Roosevelt Robinson selected to attend an NFL event

Posted by Danny Ventura (Boston Herald - High School Insider)

Madison Park football coach Roosevelt Robinson is among 51 top high school football coaches selected by the NFL to participate in the eleventh annual NFL-USA Football Youth Football Summit July 20-21 during the lead up to the 2011 Hall of Fame Weekend in Canton.

Local basketball stars making a difference

Posted by Danny Ventura (Boston Herald - High School Insider)

    Malcolm Wynn couldn’t help but chuckle during a recent session at the MB Sports Camps on the campus of Curry College.

    The head instructor for the boys and girls basketball camp, Wynn watched as former local hoop stars Wayne Turner (Beaver CD/Kentucky), Monty Mack (South Boston/UMass), Steve Hailey (Worcester Academy/Boston College) and Courtney Eldridge (Thayer/UNC-Greensboro) regaled a group of nearly 140 kids with their basketball tales.

    “As they were talking, I started to realize that I’m getting old,” Wynn said with a laugh. “I can remember coaching against them when they were kids and now here they are giving advice.”

    While the MB Sports Camps has been around since 1995, this is just the second year that the camp has branched out to include basketball. After drawing 50 kids in the two-week session last year (24 the first week, 26 the second), the camp has expanded to nearly 300 this year.

    “The whole thing has been great,” Wynn said. “But the best thing is seeing these young men giving back to the community.”

    Wynn just turned 55, but he has no plans of slowing down. He is heading into his ninth season as head men’s basketball coach at Curry, but Wynn is adding a familiar face to the Colonels bench – Lance Tucker. Tucker was the longtime head hoop coach at Brookline and Wynn served as his assistant for 13 years.

    “Lance will always be the head coach to me,” Wynn said. “I’m so excited to be able to bring someone like Lance back here.”

For more information, visit the website http://www.mbsportscamps.com/

Karl Hobbs returns to UConn men's basketball

Storrs, Conn. —  Karl Hobbs was named Director of Men’s Basketball Administration at UConn, it was announced Tuesday by head coach Jim Calhoun.

“I am very excited to have Karl rejoin our staff here at UConn,” Calhoun said in a statement. “Karl is a proven professional and is a Husky. He will be a great fit and I know that the team and staff will benefit from his return.”

“I am blessed with the opportunity to work with such incredible coaches, administrators and student-athletes,” Hobbs said. “I consider everyone at UConn to be family to me and I take great pride in returning under the tutelage of such a phenomenal Hall of Famer and mentor in Coach Calhoun. I credit Coach for so much of the success that I have had in my career and to be back working for him is a thrill. It is an exciting time to be at UConn, under the direction of new President Susan Herbst, and I have such gratitude and respect for Jeff Hathaway and the impact that he has had on my career. I look forward to getting started and jumping in with both feet, getting to know the  players and reconnecting with the many people still on the staff from my previous time on campus.”

In his 10 seasons at GW, Hobbs led the Colonials to unprecedented heights, capturing a pair of Atlantic 10 Tournament titles, one regular season championship and making five postseason appearances, including three straight NCAA Tournament trips from 2004-06. Hobbs compiled a record of 166-129 in his ten seasons.

Hobbs spent the 1993-94 through 2000-01 seasons as an assistant coach for UConn, helping the Huskies earn five BIG EAST Regular Season titles, three BIG EAST Tournament crowns and the 1999 NCAA National Championship. UConn had a record of 216-56 in his eight seasons on the staff.

Copyright 2011 The Bulletin. Some rights reserved

Read more: Karl Hobbs returns to UConn men's basketball - Norwich, CT - The Bulletin http://www.norwichbulletin.com/archive/x121484710/Karl-Hobbs-returns-to-UConn-mens-basketball#ixzz1SaMXY5Ma

College athletes deserve to be paid

By Michael Wilbon
ESPN.com
I used to argue vehemently against paying college athletes. Tuition, room, board and books were compensation enough. And even if, increasingly, it wasn't enough and virtually every kid who accepted a scholarship was in the red before Christmas of his freshman year, the notion of pay-for-play was at best a logistical nightmare. Where exactly would the money come from? How could you pay college football players but not baseball players or members of the women's field hockey team? And how in the world would you pay men in a way that wouldn't violate Title IX?

[+] Enlarge

Ronald Martinez/Getty ImagesThe UConn basketball team's run to the NCAA championship generated millions for the NCAA and the university.

So you know what caused me to do a 180 on the issue? That $11 billion deal -- OK, it's $10.8 billion to be exact -- between the NCAA and CBS/Turner Sports for March Madness between 2011 and 2024. We're talking $11 billion for three weekends of television per year. On top of that, there's a new four-year deal with ESPN that pays the BCS $500 million. So, if those two deals were worth, say, a combined $10 billion instead of $11.3 billion, would the games not be televised? Would the quality of the broadcasts or the coverage or the staging of the events be somehow diminished? What if people in the business of money took $1.3 billion off the top, invested it, sheltered it and made it available to provide a stipend to college athletes, how could anybody stand on principal and argue against paying the people who make the events possible in the first place?

Let me declare up front I wouldn't be the slightest bit interested in distributing the funds equitably or even paying every college athlete. I'm interested in seeing the people who produce the revenue share a teeny, tiny slice of it. That's right, football and men's basketball players get paid; lacrosse, field hockey, softball, baseball, soccer players get nothing. You know what that's called? Capitalism. Not everything is equal, not everything is fair. The most distinguished professor at the University of Alabama won't make $5.9 million in his entire tenure in Tuscaloosa; Nick Saban will make that this year. So I don't want to hear that it's "unfair" to pay the quarterback of Alabama more than all the sociology students in the undergraduate college.

Using the inability to distribute the funds equally as an impediment is an excuse, a rather intellectually lazy one at that. Nothing about the way hundreds of millions of dollars is distributed is equitable or even fair. The BCS' new deal with ESPN was based, in part, on paying more money to schools/conferences with regard to what has been called "population centers." Of the $174 million distributed from five bowl games, 83.4 percent went to six conferences in 2011. In question right now is whether the BCS even conducts its business dealings in a manner consistent with principles expressed in federal anti-trust laws. So, the equitable-application excuse for not paying athletes doesn't hold water; at the very least there's a level of hypocrisy here that ought to make the opponents of paying athletes uncomfortable.

Don't get me wrong, paying players out of individual athletic department budgets is beyond impractical; it's probably not feasible. Because so many athletic departments run at a deficit, it's difficult to make the case that schools should pay regular salaries to athletes, even football players who produce more income than anybody. But it's another thing entirely for the students who play for revenue-producing teams (at UConn and the University of Tennessee, this would include the women's basketball teams) to be somehow compensated from the lucrative television/radio/Internet rights fees they make wholly possible.

It's commendable that the NCAA has paid millions into a fund for in-need athletes to cover clothing purchases, emergency travel and medical expenses. There's also a special assistance fund and a student-athlete opportunity fund. Why can't hundreds of millions of dollars be directed into those, and in turn make money much more accessible to athletes for the kinds of regular day-to-day expenses regular college students pay by working jobs that are off-limits to intercollegiate athletes?

[+] Enlarge

David Madison/Getty ImagesPlayers like Andrew Luck, who are the face of their university, deserve to be compensated.

In the meantime, if they cannot be paid outright, surely the scholarship athletes should be able to engage in entrepreneurial pursuits that currently leads to costly NCAA investigations that have proven to be mostly a waste of time since, one, such activities historically haven't been checked and, two, the kids who commit the "infractions" aren't effectively punished. Their revelations, short of Heisman Trophy winners having to return their statues, wind up penalizing only the kids and coaches who remain on the team and in the vast majority of cases have done nothing to merit a penalty themselves.

If somebody is willing to give A.J. Green $750 or $1,000 or even $2,500 for his Georgia Bulldogs jersey, fine, good. If one of his teammates, a tackle, can fetch only $50 for his jersey, then it'll be a good marketing lesson for both of them. It's called supply and demand, and if both men are fortunate enough to reach the NFL it'll be a lesson worth learning because that dynamic will exist their entire careers. If a soccer player can't get a dime for his jersey, well, there's a realization in that, too.

The question from the opponents of paying college athletes inevitably comes back, "What would stop a star player from agreeing to shake hands at a local car dealership for $50,000?" The answer is, nothing. If a car dealer wants to strike that deal then good for the player in question. If a music student goes out in the summer and earns 50 grand, who objects? Who even knows? The student-musician is no less a college student because he struck a lucrative deal. Neither is the student-journalist who spends his nights writing freelance stories and picking up as much money along the way as he can.

If the student as athlete can find a way, he/she should be able to endorse products, to have paid-speaking gigs, to sell memorabilia, as Allen Sack, the author and professor at the college of business at the University of New Haven has suggested in recent years. The best college athletes in the two revenue-producing sports have always been worth much more than tuition, room, board and books. The best football and basketball players in the Big Ten have produced to the degree that a television network has become the model for every conference in America, a network worth at least tens of millions of dollars to the member institutions. Yet, no player can benefit from that work. The players have become employees of the universities and conferences as much as students -- employees with no compensation, which not only violates common decency but perhaps even the law.



Michael Wilbon is a featured columnist for ESPN.com and ESPNChicago.com. He is the longtime co-host of "Pardon the Interruption" on ESPN and appears on the "NBA Sunday Countdown" pregame show on ABC in addition to ESPN. Wilbon joined ESPN.com after three decades with The Washington Post, where he earned a reputation as one of the nation's most respected sports journalists.

Bostonians Weigh-in on Bill Russell Statue Site